Chicken and Pork Adobo

I was craving adobo again recently and decided to try my hand at a new recipe. Only recently, thanks to Joey, have I discovered this popular Filipino dish, which is also their national dish.

Adobo can be prepared in numerous ways and with a large selection of ingredients and flavors. One of my favorite aspects of adobo is the addition of a little vinegar to some of the recipes early on in the preparation. This adds a great tart flavor, different from that gained from adding lime juice to some Thai dishes. A lot of the recipes also calls for cracked or fresh peppercorns, another favorite of mine.

The dish I made was a chicken and pork adobo. I strayed a little from the recipe, I marinated my meat a little first and used coconut milk instead of stock- I did not have any available when I started cooking.

So to make my version of this dish you need to find:
- 200g pork belly, cut into cubes
- 200g chicken, cut into cubes
- 2 tablespoons vinegar
- cracked pepper
- ¼ teaspoon turmeric
- 4 cloves of garlic, crushed
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoons fish sauce
- 2 tablespoons oil
- 1/2 cup coconut milk (or 1 cup stock)
- fresh green peppercorns

To make:

Marinated the meat in 1tablespoon oil, the turmeric and about a ¼ teaspoon cracked pepper for an hour.
When the meat is ready, heat 1 tablespoon oil in a pan and sauté garlic until fragrant. Add the meat and brown until golden. Add the vinegar, but do not stir until the vinegar boils and release it’s acidic odor. Add a little more cracked pepper if you like and the fish sauce. Add some green peppercorns and the coconut milk (or stock) and stew for a couple of minutes, while stirring regularly. Dish up and serve.

I topped the adobo with some fried plantains. It made a fine accompaniment to the stew. Note that you can completely leave out the whole marinating in turmeric part, I just felt like experimenting.

 

Cooking Filipino

Where has the time gone? We’re leaving for Hanoi on Friday and somehow it feels like there are loads of things I still have to finish before then.

One of them is to mention that I received the sweetest prize package from Joey last week and have been experimenting with some adobo recipes. Adobo is the national dish of the Philippines, and I now know why. It’s delicious. There are a myriad varieties on the dish and you can make it using almost any kind of meat or vegetables.

I made one adobo with chicken and another with fish and what was fascinating is how some of the flavors were similar to those used in Thai cooking, yet it tastes completely different. Blending coconut milk in a stew with a little vinegar and some pepper is a sure winner!

Besides Filipino dinners I also tried my hand at some dessert. I made a crazy rich and creamy rice crispy ice cream which can easily be done without using an ice-cream maker. Very simple but really tasty!

I feel I should be sharing the recipes, but I also feel like my head is spinning with everything that needs to be done in the next two days. So I’m just going to share some pictures of…

…the coconut chicken adobo…

… the fish adobo…

… and the ice-cream. It looks a bit wobbly, but it was yummy!

In other news… I’ll be posting the roundup to HHDD on Friday before leaving. Even though entries closed on Monday I will accept some late entries until tomorrow 12PM my time (GMT +7 hours). Entries should be emailed to me at bordeaux76@gmail.com.

 

Fruity-nutty Dessert Pizza

Just some apricot cheese, fresh snow pear and almond slivers on top of melted mozzarella and voila!

A dessert pizza is born.

Out of all the pizzas I made recently I think I personally loved this one the most. The fruitiness tasted kind of unique. and looking at it made me very happy.

 

My Tom Khaa Kai, with Banana Flower too!

I grabbed what was lying around in the fridge last night and tried to make something like a thom khaa kai, it translates as boiled galangal chicken and is used to describe a milder coconut-y sour soup. Mine was less soupy and more like a kind of stew, but it was still tasty, blending some lovely Thai flavors in a creamy-dreamy coconut dish.

To make my version of TKK you need to round up:

1 chicken breast- sliced

4 slices galangal

1 stalk lemon grass chopped into 1 inch pieces

4 kaffir lime leaves

1 small green chili, chopped

3 shiitake mushrooms

6 cherry tomatoes

2 spring onions- whites slices into 1 inchpieces

some sliced and wash banana flower

lime juice and fish sauce to taste

1 and 1/2 cups water

1 cup coconut milk

Make:

Bring the water to a boil and add the lemon grass and galangal. Cook till fragrant. Add the chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes, banana flower and the coconut milk. Bring to a boil and cook until the chicken is done. Add the spring onions, kaffir lime leaves and chili. Cook for another 2-3 minutes. Add lime juice and fish sauce to taste. Remove from the heat and serve.

I cooked some brown rice to go with the dish and sliced some kaffir lime leaves to garnish and to add a bit more flavor. The earthiness of the brown rice and the creaminess of the main dish were quite complimentary I thought.

 

Spanako-pizza!

Oh this is so intimidating. Writing an entry for an entry. My nerves are shot!

Not really, I am just being overly dramatic due to a terrible lack of sleep. I decided to take the day off to recuperate, but instead I am writing. No big surprises there really. Goodness, how I digress.

This here spanako-pizza is my entry for this month’s Hay Hay it’s Donna Day food blogging event. Joey over at 80 Breakfasts, one of my neighbors here in South East Asia (she lives in the Philippines), is hosting this month’s event and the super-theme she chose was pizza. Mmm, pizza.

Why did I name this pizza a spanako-pizza? Continue reading and find out.

I followed the Donna Hay recipe, available here on Joey’s blog. It’s real simple and renders a superb and wholesome thin-crusted pizza base.

Here’s what you need to collect for the pizza dough:

1 teaspoon dry yeast

a pinch of sugar (I use about a 1/4 teaspoon)

2/3 cup warm water

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon olive oil

Make:

Place yeast, sugar and warm water in a bowl and let it stand until it becomes bubbly. Be patient as this takes a while, but it looks great fun once it really starts bubbling! Meanwhile, sift together the flour and salt. When the liquid mixture is all bubbly, add it to the dry mixture and combine and kneed it into a smooth dough. This should take about 10 minutes of elbow grease. Put it into a large, oiled bowl, cover and allow to stand until it has doubled in size. This takes another while so just leave it be while you enjoy a bit of reading or begin preparing the topping.

And here follows the topping. I love spanakopitas. Those fabulous greek filo pastries filled with spinach and dill goodness, so I decided to top a pizza with it.

For spanakopita filling/topping you need:

about two cups fresh spinach, well packed

5 chopped green onions

2 tablespoons fresh dill

4 tablespoons crumbled feta

olive oil

salt

fresh pepper

Make:

Place washed spinach in a little boiling water and cook for about three minutes. Rinse and squeeze out excess water. Heat a little oil in a pan and cook the onions, spinach and dill for about another three minutes, until the onion is soft. Remove from heat and let it cool for a minute, then mix in the crumbled feta and add some salt and ground pepper to taste.

And now for the pizza:

Preheat your oven to 220C and place a flat baking tray in the oven to heat. Lightly dust a cookie sheet with some flour or semolina and roll out half of the pizza dough until it is about 3mm thick. Brush a little olive oil onto the pizza and top it with the spanakopita filling. Lift the cookie sheet onto the preheated tray and bake it for about 15 minutes or until the pizza is golden and crisp.

Slice it up and serve. Watch your guests take a bite and see the appreciative smiles forming on their faces. Delightful!

 

Pizzas

After my first home made pizzas I’ve been busy with more this week for the Hay Hay It’s Donna Day challenge hosted by Joey at 80Breakfasts. Great excuse for trying out a variety of ideas.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the best pizzas are the simplest ones. I’ve made some elaborate ones which took forever and left me feeling worn out and grumpy. They were fine, but they tasted just a bit like they were trying too hard. The ones where I just threw a couple of ingredients onto the base and then baked them were the ones that ended up being the most satisfying.

So I’ll be working with them and then hopefully have something to send to her for this challenge.

 

Thin Crusted Pizzas

Once in a while an exceptionally good bad movie shows on our only movie channel. When one of these come around we order pizza and sit on the bed eating it while tearing the movie apart. We’ve watched ‘She’s the Man’ and ‘Material Girls’ amongst others like this. There’s nothing like ordering generic pizza and watching generic nonsense on a Sunday night.

Lately there have been absolutely now good bad movies. They’re all just really bad, so we have not been having any pizza. But we were craving pizza. I’ve been craving pizza, not fast food pizza, but fresh, homemade pizza, ever since I read this entry weeks ago on Food To Nourish the Spirit and Soothe the Soul.

Staring at the dark green pepper corns in Alexander’s lunch at Greyhound Saturday afternoon, I started thinking about dinner, (yes, I am the kind of person who can eat a perfectly satisfying and scrumptious meal and already be thinking about the next one plus what will be eaten for snacks in between the two).

In the fridge we had asparagus, a very agreeable piece of Morbier that Tim picked up while visiting (thanks Tim), one chicken breast, some kaffir lime leaves, leaves and lemon grass. In my mind’s eye these ingredients plus a couple of others began to come together in a two sublime pizzas. All I needed to pick up were some fresh pepper corns, mushrooms and Mozzarella cheese.

And here are the results of my lunchtime fantasy.

Two gorgeous thin-crusted pizzas (I don’t like thick crusts). One with Morbier, fresh asparagus, and mushrooms, the other with a stir-fried combination of a little lemon grass, one kaffir lime leave, one tiny red chil, one clove garlic, fresh peppercorn and chicken. The latter subtly blended some of my favorite Thai flavors- it was perfect!

I thought I messed up the dough because I could not quite follow the original instructions (I have no kitchen scale), but it came out perfectly. It’s really easy to make, so I will share my way, which is pretty much the same as the recipe I used, of making thin-crusted pizza dough.

Arrange:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon dry yeast

1/2 tablespoon white sugar

1 teaspoon salt

150 ml cold water

1 tablespoon softened butter

Make:

Mix the dry ingredients well in a mixing bowl. Add the cold water and mix on medium speed with an electric mixer for about two minutes (use the dough hooks on your mixer). Increase the speed and add the butter, mix for about 15 minutes. I have a hand-held mixture, so this process was quite excruciating.

Pour this thick gooey mixture into an airtight container and leave for an hour.

After an hour, preheat the oven to 250C. Fflour a working surface and your hands and start working the dough, add more flour and work it until it is not sticky anymore and quite elastic. Make two balls and roll them out thinly. Put the pizza on an oven pan that’s been lined with a cookie sheet. Brush with olive oil, add Mozzarella and rest of the topic and bake for under ten minutes until the crust has been lightly browned. Remove from the oven and take pleasure in gobling up your home-made pizza.

Suggestions for thin crusted pizzas:

- After mixing the dough and leaving it in the container I thought it was going to rise, but it didn’t, so I thought it flopped, but this was not the case, I think. It just became rather bubbly and working in the flour created a very nice dough.

- If you want a thicker crust you should not roll it out too thinly.

 

It’s a Kind of Custard and it is Deeelicious!

It’s natillas!

Visiting Alexander’s family in Albuquerque, New Mexico, last year I got so excited about all the mouth-watering New Mexican dishes that for Christmas they sent me this exciting and instructive cook book with recipes from their home state.

It gives a history of NM cooking and includes a wide variety of recipes to reflect the state’s rich cultural heritage, from green chili to moussaka. Awesome! I started using it the moment I opened it and experimented with quite a few recipes like the signature New Mexican green chili (I love this stuff), chili rejenos, Navajo fry bread and green chili enchiladas. All lip-smacking goodness.

Yesterday I tried my hand at natillas, a custard dessert with a Spanish origin. Alexander told me he has a great aunt who used to make really delectable natillas, so I was a nervous about how my efforts would come out.

Oh, but no fear was necessary. It came out just lovely. A rich, pale yellow custard that begged to be savored and eaten in large quantities. Mmm, give me more of that!

So here is how you make natillas, and you really should try it. It’s decadent!

Collect:

500ml full cream milk

4 eggs, separated

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

pinch of salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

nutmeg to garnish

Make:

Mix the egg yolks, one cup of the milk and flour well and set aside.

Pour the rest of the milk into a saucepan with the sugar and salt and scald, stirring constantly so the sugar dissolve.

Remove from heat and gradually stir it into the egg yolk mixture. Return to low and heat and stir constantly until the mixture is thick and creamy.

Remove from heat, stir in vanilla and set aside to cool. In the meantime, beat the egg whites until they are stiff, but not dry. Fold them into the cooled mixture. Pour it all into a bowl, sprinkles with some nutmeg and chill (it) before serving.

When eating, make sure you scrape your bowl properly to let none of this goodness go to waste.

Suggestions and tips for making natillas:

- The recipe book suggested it should take about 30 minutes for the mixture to thicken, but on our gas stove and in the wok it took about 10 minutes, so watch it carefully.

- You can decorate your servings natillas with some sprinkles or some more nutmeg and I am certain that dropping some chocolate shavings would add to the attraction.